Trivia

Collaborated on eight films of director Martin Ritt.

Often worked in tandem with his screenwriter wife, Harriet Frank Jr. They were married in 1946, while working together at MGM.

Could tell time without a clock, within ten minutes of accuracy.

Attended Long Beach College and graduated from UCLA with a major in English.

Retired in Laurel Canyon, Los Angeles. (February 2008)

His father was a Jewish immigrant who had fled the Russian pogroms, became a pharmacist and, later, a rabbi. His mother, an emigrant from what is now northern Israel, was a Hebrew teacher.

Suffered from severe asthma from childhood.